Anatomy of a Revolution, The
The Anatomy of Revolution is a book by Crane Brinton outlining the “uniformities” of four major political revolutions: the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American, the French, and 1917 Russian Revolution. Brinton notes how the revolutions followed a life-cycle from the Old Order to a moderate regime to a radical regime, to Thermidorian reaction.
By Brinton, Crane

Autobiography of Malcolm X, The
In the sixties, as voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one voice sounded more urgently, more passionately, than the rest. Malcolm X – once called the most dangerous man in America -challenged the world to listen and learn the truth as he experienced it.
By Haley, Alex

Atlas Shrugged
“Who is John Galt?” is the immortal question posed at the beginning of Ayn Rand’s masterpiece. The answer is the astonishing story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world—and did. As passionate as it is profound, Atlas Shrugged is one of the most influential novels of our time. In it, Rand dramatizes the main tenets of Objectivism, her philosophy of rational selfishness. She explores the ramifications of her radical thinking in a world that penalizes human intelligence and […]
By Rand, Ayn

Bakunin: The Creative Passion
“The passion for destruction is a creative passion,” wrote the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in 1842. Since then, the popular image of anarchism has been one of violence and terror. But this picture is wildly misleading, and the media has done more to obscure anarchism than to explain it.
Mark Leier shows that the “passion for destruction” is a call to build a new world free of oppression, not a cult of violence. He argues that anarchism is a philosophy of morality and solidarity, based not on wishful thinking or naive beliefs about the goodness of humanity but on a practical, radical critique of wealth and power. By studying Bakunin, we can learn a great deal about our own time and begin to recover a world of possibility and promise.
By Leier, Mark

Bending Cross, The
Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning. – Eugene Debs in 1918 Orator, organizer, self-taught scholar, presidential candidate, and prisoner, Eugene Debs’ lifelong commitment to the fight for a better world is chronicled in this unparalleled biography by historian Ray Ginger. This moving story presents the definitive account of the life and legacy of the most eloquent spokesperson and leader of the U.S. […]
By Ginger, Ray

Civilization: The West and the Rest
How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications” – competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic – that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.
By Ferguson, Niall

Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, TheGlobalization, like many great geopolitical ideologies before it, is now officially dead. Despite the near-religious conviction with which it was conceived, a growing vagueness now surrounds its promise that nation-states were heading toward irrelevance, to be replaced by the power of global markets; that economics, not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events; that growth in international trade would foster prosperous markets that would, in turn, abolish poverty and change dictatorships into democracies.
By Saul, John Ralston

Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder committed on principle, of a killer who wishes to set himself outside and above society. It is marked by Dostoevsky’s own harrowing experience, and yet there are moments of wild humour.
By Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Defying HitlerA unique and compelling eyewitness account of Germany between the wars.A huge bestseller in Germany, Defying Hitler is a memoir about the rise of Nazism in Germany and the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. This fresh and astute account offers a unique perspective on this era of twentieth-century history. Covering the years from 1907 to 1933, Haffner’s personal memories form the basis for questioning, analyzing, and interpreting much of Germany’s history. His eyewitness account […]
By Haffner, Sebastian

End of Growth, TheAdapting to Our New Economic Reality.
Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits. Richard Heinberg’s latest landmark work goes to the heart of the ongoing financial crisis, explaining how and why […]
By Heinberg, Richard

Fathers and SonsStory of two friends who come back home to their native country from university with nihilist leanings and believes. The generation gap between the fathers and sons in the story neatly symbolized the current political debates between the older reactionaries and the younger radicals.
By Turgenev, Ivan

Fountainhead, TheWhen The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand”s daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him.
By Rand, Ayn

Germany Must Perish
The March 1941 publication of Germany Must Perish! provoked one of the most intense propaganda exchanges of World War II. The book, written by an American Jew, Theodore Kaufman, advocated the physical destruction of the German people through mass sterilization and the total dismemberment of the German state.
By Kaufman, Theodore N.

Great PlainsA travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull’s cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote’sIn Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.
By Frazier, Ian

Great Transformation, The: The Political and Economic Origins of Our TimeIn this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the “great transformation” of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi’s seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
By Karl Polanyi

Living My Life
Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous–and notorious–woman in the early twentieth century.By Goldman, Emma

Louder Voices: The Corporate Welfare BumsThe corporate welfare state is not a new phenomenon, despite the notoriety it has achieved only recently. Unlike its counterpart, the social welfare state, its gestation period has been largely unobserved by interpreters of social events. And while social welfare legislation has been subjected to the most critiical scrutiny as to its costs, benefits and consequences, the attention of Canadians has been deflected from any examination of the other face of the mixed economy, Canadian-style: the corporate welfare state.By Lewis, David

No Logo
Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies No Logo reveals the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and cultural reach of multinational companies.
By Klein, Naomi

Notes From The UndergroundDostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground.
Darkly fascinating short novel depicts the struggles of a doubting, supremely alienated protagonist in a world of relative values. Seminal work introduced moral, religious, political and social themes that dominated Dostoyevsky’s later masterworks… In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from […]
By Dostoyevsky, Fydor

Party of OneA scathing indictment of a prime minister determined to remake Canada. In Party of One, investigative journalist Michael Harris closely examines the majority government of a prime minister essentially unchecked by the opposition and empowered by the general election victory of May 2011. Harris looks at Harper’s policies, instincts, and the often breathtaking gap between his stated political principles and his practices.
By Harris, Michael

Pattern of Politics, The
Taylor’s discussion of the politics of polarization is insightful. I agree with him that this pattern is more appropriate and necessary for Canada than the politics of consensus.
By Charles Taylor

Power Elite, TheMills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities.
By Mills, C. Wright

Price of Citizenship, The: Redefining the American Welfare State
“Katz traces the evolution of the welfare state from colonial relief programs through the war on poverty and into our own age, marked by the “end of welfare as we know it.” “Arguably the leading historian of American social welfare, Katz has written a defining history of post-Nixon transformations of America’s welfare state. . . . This is a masterpiece of contemporary history.”
By Katz, Michael B.

Resistance, Rebellion and Death“I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one”
By Camus, Albert

Revolt of the Bees, TheViews on education. “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind, have been convinced that the fate of empires depended on the education given to youth; and from their reflections we may lay it down as an evident principle, that education, the laws, and manners, ought never to contradict each other.”…. “the character is formed for and not by the individual.”
By Morgan, John Minter

Road to Serfdom, TheA medieval serf worked 3 days for his lord. If you aggregate all the taxes you pay, not just income taxes, you work 4 days.
By Hayek, F.A.

Tom Paine: A Political Life
“More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world.” Tracing the life of one of the most highly regarded political figures of his generation, this work presents both the public and private sides of Paine’s life.
By Keane, John

Understanding Power: The Indispensable ChomskyChomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades, covering topics from foreign policy during Vietnam to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America’s imperialistic foreign policy and the decline of domestic social services…
By Chomsky, Noam

Utopian Communist, TheWilhelm Weitling was an important 19th-century European radical. Both praised and critiqued by disciples of the growing Marxist philosophy during the 19th century, Weitling was characterized as a “utopian…
By Wittke, Carl

Virtue of SelfishnessAyn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life – the life proper to a rational being – as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man’s nature, with the creative requirements of his survival, and with a free society.
By Rand, Ayn

Voltaire’s BastardsThe Dictatorship of Reason in the West. A sweeping and provocative exploration of nothing less than the political, economic, social, and cultural origins of Western society.
By Saul, John Ralston

Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
For bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges, we are once again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. From the vantage point of a world on the edge, Wages of Rebellion investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion and resistance.
By Hedges, Chris

World and the West, The
Here, in under 100 pages, the estimable historian spins off so many ideas that now seem prescient or quite possibly predictive of our future… The profundity per page ratio is astonishing.
By Toynbee, Arnold